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Psilocybin mushrooms, ketamine and LSD all show interesting results at alleviating mental difficulties such as depression. The pharmaceutical industry is of course largely against this positive evidence on those drugs, but this is as their synthetic antidepressants don’t work well enough and can even have their own downsides. New approaches are needed (with microdosing perhaps) for these widespread problems of mental suffering, including different policy decisions than what’s mostly been done in the last four decades of upwards redistribution to the richest class.

In recent years, scientists have been uncovering potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic substances like psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) – it looks like they can ‘reset’ the brain in people with mental health conditions.

Now a new study has revealed exactly what’s going on inside our brains when we take LSD, uncovering a connection that might explain why it relieves the symptoms of disorders such as PTSD and chronic depression.

Research led by the Center for Brain and Cognition at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona has discovered a process of ‘harmonising’ across areas of the brain that don’t usually work together.

Referred to by the team as ‘repertoire expansion’, it suggests psychedelic substances like LSD could be encouraging the brain to develop certain patterns of activity.

The team thinks these patterns could help compensate the disordered connections that can cause mental suffering.

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For one thing, after half a century of being stigmatised as dangerous recreational drugs, it’s still slow going to build up the evidence base supporting the healing potential psychedelic pharmaceuticals.